GG - more harpsichord

[Bradley Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

A few days ago Jim had asked for some suggestions of *good* harpsichord
recordings since I'm clearly not too enthusiastic about GG's disc of Handel....

There are so many that could be recommended!  Really anything by Leonhardt,
Parmentier, Baiano, Hantai, Robert Hill, and so many other players too
numerous to mention here.  Last week I discovered the playing of Roberto
Loreggian in Italian repertoire: wow!

If you're into French music, there was a great set of Blandine Verlet
playing Louis Couperin (but now unavailable?)...her Bach recordings of the
past few years have also been pretty interesting bringing out the French
side of Bach's style.  (Her Partitas set is OK but she plays *much* better
now than she did back then in the 1970's....)  A few years ago I heard her
play an exquisite recital of Francois Couperin, with fantastic grace and
poise and timelessness (some Gouldian "ecstasy" there).

This afternoon I discovered the bargain CD site
http://www.cybermusicsurplus.com/ and promptly found a huge bit of
temptation there.  If you go into the classical area there and search for
"loreggian" you'll find four outstanding discs (I already have the Ferrini
and promptly ordered the others).  The Giles Farnaby disc by a very young
Pierre Hantai is there: I guarantee that some of his playing will drop your
jaw (totally disproving GG's idea that the harpsichord can't go fast).  An
excellent set of the Bach English Suites by Jaccottet is there (and hard to
find elsewhere)...I think all of her Bach is outstanding.

No GG that I saw at that site, but there's somebody else's recording of
Enoch Arden including another Strauss melodrama....

On a totally different front, I'm fond of the 1971 disc by Sean O Riada, an
Irish composer, playing Irish folk music on
harpsichord.  http://indigo.ie/~claddagh/CC12.htm  The harpsichord on there
is the WORST I have ever heard on a commercially released recording: a bad
one to begin with, and then horrible regulation (unevenness) and some of
the treble octaves are pretty far out of tune.  And yet, the performance
has such soul and directness to it.  The quirks of the bad instrument
become endearing, in a way.  It sounds as if he's improvising the whole
album, and maybe he was.  He wasn't even a harpsichordist, either, nor did
he evidently have much keyboard technique at all...but the music is
stunning in a way that's hard to describe.

Bradley Lehman
Dayton VA
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl